


the deepest sleep you can imagine

by thewritingnaturalist



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types
Genre: And Some Hope, Angst, Blood and Injury, Gay Edmund Pevensie, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pevensie Siblings Have Lots of Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:27:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28255407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewritingnaturalist/pseuds/thewritingnaturalist
Summary: A few days before The Last Battle, the Pevensie siblings find that although they can't go back to Narnia, they can still dream of it.
Relationships: Aslan & Susan Pevensie, Caspian/Edmund Pevensie, Edmund Pevensie & Lucy Pevensie & Peter Pevensie & Susan Pevensie, Jill Pole & Eustace Scrubb, Jill Pole & Lucy Pevensie, Jill Pole/Eustace Scrubb, Lucy Pevensie & Eustace Scrubb, Lucy Pevensie & Tumnus
Comments: 1
Kudos: 32





	the deepest sleep you can imagine

**Author's Note:**

> (Title comes from Prince Caspian: "Lucy woke out of the deepest sleep you can imagine, with the feeling the voice she liked best in the world was calling her name.”)

Peter Pevensie didn’t dream anymore. Or if he did, he didn’t remember it. 

It was probably just overwork, he told himself. And he certainly worked: splashing cold water on his face at dawn before his shift at the grocery store on the corner, scribbling comprehensive (if, as Ed pointed out, terribly spelt) notes on every lecture he attended, peeling back the fibers of a tricep in the cadaver lab, rolling up his sleeves for another volunteer shift at the local A&E, and studying, always studying, for the exams that loomed just around the corner. He came home late these days, scrubbed the blood and formaldehyde out of his nails, and fell into bed, half the time with his clothes still on. 

Oddly enough, he couldn’t remember a time when he was happier. 

He had been good at fighting, in Narnia, he knew. Better than Ed, who always got in his head and started overthinking things, and better than Lucy, who had the best aim of any of them and never used it unless absolutely necessary. Peter _enjoyed_ fighting. He liked the sharp, bright scrape of his lungs panting for air. He liked the way his sword arm shook at the end of a long battle, and the knife-edge precariousness of leading a charge with blood leaking through the gaps in his armor. When they got back for the second time, the others had assumed he would go into the army, or become a boxer ** _—_** anything to punch the displaced, homesick ache they all felt in their bones into submission. The fervor with which he threw himself into medical school was a surprise to them. 

It was difficult to explain, even to himself, that medicine was a different kind of fighting. At the A&E, he learned to use a low, reassuring voice when he spoke to patients, to keep his hands calm on the desk as he delivered bad news, to steady a shaky old woman with a touch on her back. He learned how to talk to small children, and realized, to his surprise, that he was good at it. 

Last month, there was a nasty car crash. Six people. Four of them under the age of twelve. Three critically injured. Peter charged into it like he charged into the Second Battle of Beruna: knife sharp, hands bloody, eyes shining, and terrified out of his mind. They didn’t lose a single patient, and he had to hold back a laugh afterwards when one of the senior doctors told him that he was “magnificent.”

He used to dream of Narnia every night. All of them did. They never talked about it much, but he grew accustomed, over the years, to hearing Edmund shout hoarse orders in his sleep, with a voice that sounded far older and more burdened than a nineteen-year-old’s should. Lucy dreamed more rarely, and came downstairs every few months with a glowing face and tears on her cheeks. And Susan...Susan never spoke of it, but he noticed the strange, jealous fierceness in her eyes, and the twitch of her bow hand around her cereal bowl. (He sometimes wondered if Susan, like him, had enjoyed fighting.)

Peter didn’t dream now, and to his surprise, he found as the exhausting, bloody, exhilarating days ticked by that he didn’t particularly miss it.

He licked the end of his pencil and wrote _Peter Pevensie_ at the top of his latest exam paper. You had to admit, it was definitely faster than _High King Peter the Magnificent, Emperor of the Lone Islands, Lord of Cair Paravel, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Lion._

It was two in the morning, and he really should have been asleep, but there was a faint smile on his face as he started in on a question about the ventricles of the heart. This was his kingdom.

* * *

As always, Lucy Pevensie woke the moment the lamppost outside her window flickered out.

She was smiling. It took her a moment to remember why. 

Of course. Mr. Tumnus. She dreamed about everyone in Narnia, down to the last dwarf and dryad, but she dreamed about him the most. Oddly ** _—_** because most of what she had done with Tumnus was so mundane, drinking tea or walking in the forest or helping the moles in the garden ** _—_** they were always exciting dreams. Battles, voyages. This time they had been on the coast of Archenland, fending off a sea monster, and Eustace ( _dear,_ hopeless Eustace) was there, clumsy and beaming and holding his sword slightly wrong, as usual. 

Eustace, of course, had never even set foot in Narnia until Tumnus was long dead and gone. But that’s what dreams were for, Lucy supposed.

She sighed, and pulled on her robe, and went to the window. The gray spring dawn draped over Finchley like a blanket. In an hour her mother would be up, and in an hour and a half her father, and she would make toast and sit with them by the fire and talk, cheerfully, to cover the silence the others had left behind. 

For now, Lucy sat still, and fidgeted, because the creaking steps would wake her mother if she went downstairs. She tried to read. She tried to fall back asleep. 

She hated to admit it, but Lucy was restless, these days. Despite being the youngest, she had always been the first of her siblings: the first through the wardrobe, and the first into any ballroom or castle or unknown forest. Like Susan and Peter (and rather more than Edmund, she thought, with a crease of worry between her eyes), she had thrown herself into life back in London with the same laughing vigor that she had thrown herself into any new adventure in Narnia. But the others were older, able to work and study and decide things for themselves, while Lucy was stuck finishing her exams and getting overly invested in who won the school rugby finals. 

At least she had Jill and Eustace. They came over almost every day now, to sit cross-legged on her bed and talk over each other with vigor. They still spent a good deal of the time reminiscing about Narnia ** _—_** Eustace must have told that story about Reep stabbing the merman a dozen times, but Lucy still found herself crying tears of laughter whenever it came up. But more and more, they talked about their current world: what they wanted to do, who they wanted to become. Eustace mentioned research, maybe studying bugs or rare plants. Jill wanted to travel and discover hidden cultures and send her findings to the British Museum. They had never outright said so, but Lucy always pictured them doing it together: Eustace in a wide-brimmed hat, Jill in a turban, riding camels through the desert hand in hand.

When the conversation turned to her, Lucy found that she didn’t know what she wanted, besides to be with the people she loved, and to be happy. She should be happy now ** _—_** _was_ happy, in her own strange way. And yet, when the lampposts turned off in the morning, she always found herself awake and restless, with a deep voice echoing in her head. She could never make out what it said. Was it _further up and further in?_

The clang of the kettle downstairs told her that her mother was awake. She shook the echoing voice out of her head. The lamppost was cold and dark, and it was time for the real world.

Lucy walked down the stairs like a queen ** _—_** it was a habit she had never been able to shake ** _—_** but she smiled at her mother like a seventeen-year-old Londoner with her whole life ahead of her. 

* * *

“Ed. Ed!” 

Edmund Pevensie jerked awake the same way he always did: silent, wary, ready to fight. 

His flatmate, Percy, squinted down at him with concern. With an effort, Edmund forced himself to relax.

“You were shouting,” Percy said.

“Sorry.” Edmund rubbed the bridge of his nose, feeling a headache coming on. It had been the usual dream again. _The White Witch glittering in a black forest. Blood dripping out of his own mouth onto the leaves. Caspian watching him with those unfathomably dark eyes, hefting a sword in one hand._

The dream always ended before he found out whether Caspian was going to strike him down or save him. Edmund rather thought he was relieved about that. But he had been curious, this time, to see what happened next...

“Don’t worry about it.” Percy plopped down on the couch next to Edmund and picked up his book. “ _Divine Androgyny in the Grail Romances._ Good?”

Edmund waited for the familiar twinge of annoyance. He hated it when people touched his books, as eight-year-old Lucy had learned at her peril. But Percy was watching him so intently, his long-fingered hands holding the book the right way ( _not by the cover, Lucy, and don’t splay it open_ ). For whatever reason, Edmund found that he didn’t mind.

“Not bad. Although his interpretation of Galahad is all wrong. He’s not repressing his unholy desire for women, or whatever rot Forester’s on about. He desires _God._ Women don’t even come into it.”

Percy crinkled his eyes, half-smiling, half-confused. “You seem to know rather a lot about all this.”

“I have to jam my brain with something. Otherwise I might just pass the bar, and _then_ what would Susan lecture me about when she phones?” The headache was definitely here now. Edmund thought about getting a cup of tea. He could offer Percy one too. They’d been having a lot of late-night conversations lately, debating politics and religion and whatever they could find in the paper, bare feet brushing the cold floor.

“Did you ever think about...you know. Doing this, instead of law?”

Of course he’d thought about it. He’d thought about a lot of things, recently, as he squinted in the dim light of the library and rubbed his hands together to stay warm. _I could catch a train to the professor’s house and rap on the back of the wardrobe, just once, just to check. I could shove these endless law books off the table and tell the dean that I’m quitting, that I’m going to be an author and write desperately bad books about lions and magic horns and sunlight on the water outside Cair Paravel. I could reach across the table and cover Percy’s hand with mine, and see him look up at me with those unfathomably dark eyes, and..._

“Not really, no,” Edmund said after a moment. He smiled, the usual wry smile that stood between him and the world like a sheet of ice. “Are you telling me you _want_ to come bottom of the class?” 

Percy laughed. “I still might.”

“Not if I have any say in it. My ignorance is your salvation.” Edmund stood up, dumping the books off his lap. “Tea?”

As he lay in bed that night, Edmund thought about the wardrobe. Maybe he would stop by his parents’ place to see Lucy the next day ** _—_** it had only been a few days, but she was always delighted when he came. Maybe they could tear Peter away from his A&E shifts and visit the Professor after all. The train ride wasn’t that long, really, and it couldn’t hurt to check…

_The White Witch glittered in a black forest. Blood dripped from Edmund’s mouth onto the leaves, thick and bitter. He looked up. Caspian stepped out from behind a tree, watching him with those unfathomably dark eyes, hefting a sword in one hand. He didn’t spare a glance for the witch. He raised the sword._

_Edmund bowed his head. This was it, then. Aslan had reprieved him, Caspian would slay him. He was not afraid. He had known this was coming **—** _

_Then Caspian’s lips were on his, tasting of blood and salt and honey, and the sword had dropped to the leaves in front of them, and Edmund knew with a fierce and certain knowledge that this was why his life had been spared at the Stone Table, because this moment had been written in the Deep Magic and Aslan could not let him die._

* * *

Susan Pevensie wiped off her lipstick and fell into bed, finally, at two in the morning.

She couldn’t sleep. 

It was stupid, really. Kid stuff. She couldn’t believe that Peter, with everything that was resting on his shoulders, had high-tailed it off to Kent with Ed after some dinner party with that crazy old professor. He had called her, stumbling over his words with excitement as he used to when he was a boy, to invite her along. And then Lucy had called just this evening, hesitant and glowing, to say that the boys had found the rings ( _come on, Su, the rings to the wood between the worlds, we’ve explained it all to you before, you just have to trust me_ ), and they were all packing a picnic tomorrow and taking the early train down to Kent to meet them, and maybe, just maybe…

Embarrassingly, Susan had considered it, for a moment. She was so tired these days, and she never seemed to be able to sleep long enough. She worried about them, all of them ** _—_** Peter spattered with blood in the A&E, Lucy reading alone in their parents' house, Edmund cracking jokes and failing his exams. Some fresh air might have been nice, even if her siblings were undeniably barmy.

But there had been a work party tonight at the publishing house, and she needed to be there to prove to her bosses that she was keen, and possibly to flirt with the new editor so she could finally get bumped up to an assistant editor position. The others would thank her, someday. There was more to life than fairy tales and idealism, and when Lucy needed a new pair of boots, Susan could buy them for her. That had to count for something, didn’t it? 

She was still thinking about Lucy’s boots when she fell asleep. 

_The sun was setting over the water. Except that was the eastern sea, wasn’t it, stretching into the distance beyond the gates of Cair Paravel? Rising, then._

_Susan walked across the sand toward it. There was nothing on her feet but silk stockings. That concerned her. She had paid good money for her Oxfords. Had she left them at the castle? She needed to go back for them **—** there could be rocks ahead. But when she looked behind her, Cair Paravel was fading like a mirage into the distance. _

_Forward, then._

_She looked around her as she walked. There should be someone else here, she thought. Tumnus, leaning over the gates and laughing into his pan flute. Trumpkin, stomping the well-worn path from the castle to the water, thinking over some knotty question of diplomacy or war. Perhaps one of her siblings **—** although they had never loved this beach as she had. _

_The sand stretched away, empty. She walked on._

_Seconds later, or days, or years **—** time is different in Narnia, Susan reminded herself **—** she reached the edge of the water and looked out into the golden distance. _

_It wasn’t the sun that was rising, she realized. It was a great lion, bigger than anything she could have imagined, his mane spreading around him like rays of light._

_Susan, he said, and she was filled with shame._

_Susan. Come._

_She tugged at the hem of her skirt. Touched her crimson lips with a finger. She should be wearing a Narnian dress right now, not this modern, flashy thing she had put on to convince an editor who smelled of cigarette smoke and money that she was worth his time._

_I’m not dressed for it, she said, and the excuse sounded weak even as it left her mouth._

_If I call you, you are dressed for it, the lion said._ _There was a rumble in his voice that might have been laughter._

_Come._

_Susan hesitated. She looked behind her for Lucy, Peter, someone who belonged here, who knew the rules of this uncanny world that she had fought for and danced in and never quite understood._

_There was no one there._

_She raised one silk-stockinged foot and stepped onto the water._

Susan slept late, far later than usual, and woke slowly. The early-afternoon sun streamed in her window, warming the sheets. She stretched. She felt like she’d had a strange dream, but it slipped away even as she thought of it.

The phone rang. Lucy, probably, going on about magic rings and woods between worlds again. But it would be nice to have a quick chat. They should really all catch up, sometime. She could cook a roast, and Peter could use his grocery connections to snag a bottle or two of cheap wine, and Ed could make tea and forget it in the kettle until it got bitter, and Lucy could perch on the table and pretend to be helping, when she was really just talking a mile a minute as always.

The phone rang again, insistently.

Feeling somehow lighter than she had in months, Susan answered it.


End file.
